USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center – January, 2009 United States Department of the Interior – United States Geological Survey Conservation Design for Rare Birds in the Upper Midwestern United States By Wayne E. Thogmartin, United States Geological Survey Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, La Crosse, Wisconsin, 54603; [email protected] Collaborators: Jason J Rohweder, United States Geological Survey; Jennie Pearce, Pearce & Associates Ecological Research Introduction Bird habitat conservation has for decades largely been opportunistic and single-species focused with treatments typically considered and implemented at fine scales by local managers. Although most habitat work must be completed at local scales, avian conservationists are increasingly recognizing the need to integrate continental and regional migratory bird priorities into local habitat actions. Such integration requires conservation planning. Development of biologically-based, spatially explicit, landscape- oriented habitat objectives to sustain regional bird populations at levels set by particular plans is difficult given the paucity of information required to translate bird population goals at a regional level down to habitat actions at the local level. Through conservation design, however, explicit, science-based recommendations can be developed to efficiently implement habitat protection, enhancement, or management to achieve regional conservation objectives. The key is linking population targets to habitat area and availability – and that requires a number of challenging steps, including: Study Area Upper Midwestern United States The Bird Conservation Region 23 Transitions from boreal hardwood to the north to what was once prairie in the south but is now largely row crop agriculture Relate indices of abundance to environmental characteristics route counts as response. 2) Fixed effects associated with environmental characteristics (land use, climate, etc.). fitted with Markov chain Monte Carlo methods in WinBUGS. These models accommodated random effects associated with observer differences, year effects, and spatially correlated survey effects. Acknowledgments Funding for this research was provided by USFWS Migratory Bird program (with special thanks to Steve Lewis) and the Upper Mississippi River / Great Lakes All-bird Joint Venture (with special thanks to Barbara Pardo). Management Implications State lands provide 2-4 times the management opportunities Managed lands favor the conservation of birds birds left largely outside of the conservation estate Management on private lands is essential for successful conservation of both forest and grass species. Grasshopper Sparrow Bobolink Black-billed Cuckoo Wood Thrush Relate patterns in predicted species abundance to the conservation estate. 1) (PAD4) from the Conservation Biology Institute 2) State Considerably more of forest bird populations are in a conserved state Forest Species Grassland Species Four Example Maps of Predicted Abundance Focal Grassland Birds Focal Forest Birds Grassland-bird Favored Equivocal Forest-bird Favored (‘Forest’ – ‘Grass’) / (‘Forest’ + ‘Grass’) Optimal Landscape Design Species abundances re-scaled (0-100), summed, and mean index attributed to townships. MARXAN was also used to identify an for conserving both grassland and forest species. Prediction Ensembles for_ss 0 - 2 3 - 7 8 - 10 grass2_s 0 - 2 3 - 7 8 - 10 N E W S Forest and grassland 50% conserved Areas of equivocation may be useful for restoration Eastern shore of Lake Michigan is an between grass and forest bird conservation priorities